Posts Tagged "physics"

Editor’s Note: Author and Fermilab Senior Scientist Don Lincoln is set to teach “Mysteries of the Universe” from October 13 – 24 for Scientific American’s Professional Learning Program. We recently talked with Dr. Lincoln about why he became a physicist and his motivations to share what he discovers. When I was a young boy, I [...]

Dr. Don Lincoln is a physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and an adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame. He studies data taken at the Large Hadron Collider to see if he can find evidence of particles smaller than the quarks and leptons that are currently thought to be the smallest building blocks of the universe. Lincoln is also a passionate popularizer of science, using videos, social media and books to bring the research world to the public. His most recent book, The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and other Stuff That Will Blow Your Mind, tells the exciting story of the startup of the LHC and its first discoveries.

Parallel universes are a staple of science fiction, and it’s no wonder. They allow us to explore the question, “What if?” in a way that lets us step completely outside of the world we know, rather than question how that world might have turned out differently. For cosmologists, the question isn’t “What if the South [...]

Who will win the first $50,000 Science in Action prize, sponsored by Scientific American? This award, offered as part of the 2012 Google Science Fair, will recognize a student project that addresses a social, environmental, ethical, health or welfare issue to make a practical difference to the lives of a group or community, and that [...]

Editor in Chief, Mariette DiChristina, oversees Scientific American, ScientificAmerican.com, Scientific American MIND and all newsstand special editions. Mariette can be found on Twitter as @mdichristina.

“As any adult knows, there’s one thing that any kid can do better than any grown up: ask questions. In fact, many studies have actually shown how kids are born scientists. If you don’t believe me, watch a baby first accidentally knock something off her high chair and onto the floor. She’ll look at it [...]

Editor in Chief, Mariette DiChristina, oversees Scientific American, ScientificAmerican.com, Scientific American MIND and all newsstand special editions. Mariette can be found on Twitter as @mdichristina.

One of the pleasures of editing a magazine like Scientific American, with its 166-year history as the country’s longest continuously published magazine, is getting a “you are there” view of science as it was whenever I take a spin through our digital archives. The other day, while reading some 100-year-old prose, I was reminded of [...]

Editor in Chief, Mariette DiChristina, oversees Scientific American, ScientificAmerican.com, Scientific American MIND and all newsstand special editions. Mariette can be found on Twitter as @mdichristina.

Science fared pretty well at this year’s Academy Awards. Case in point: Here’s Best Actor Eddie Redmayne on Portraying Stephen Hawking. The Alan Turing biopic, The Imitation Game, also received multiple nominatians, and the mathematician who wrote the book on Turing told journalist Christopher Mims that The Imitation Game is a fitting tribute to the [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

Winter is in full force in the Northeast, so naturally science has some insights to share for those caught in the snowdrifts. For example: Don’t Jump Out of a Window Into Snow: But If You Do… it’s best to understand the physics of a snow jump. Related: Winter Thermodynamics: the science of Foggy Glasses. Mysterious [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

Today is Valentine’s Day. In love? Or just the opposite? Express how you feel with physics-inspired Valentines—and anti-Valentines for those who perhaps aren’t huge fans of the holiday. Or check out these science-y valentines for geeks in love. Related: The stats of Sex & Love: Mathematician’s formulae for how to pull abd who to marry. [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

The physics in-jokes came fast and furious in this week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory. While telling Penny about his latest research over dinner, Leonard has a brainstorm insight, and ends up collaborating with Sheldon on a cosmology paper, which they post to the online arXiv. It gets covered on the Quantum Diaries blog [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

The Super Bowl is tomorrow, which means people were still obsessing over the so-called “DeflateGate” controversy stemming from the Patriots’ win over the Colts. This week, the N.F.L. Investigator Consulted with a Columbia Physicist. The verdict: Deflation Experiments Show Patriots May Have a Point After All; the pressure change could easily be due to atmospheric [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

Sunday brought two NFL playoff games, whereby the Seattle Seahawks eked out an unlikely victory over the Green Bay Packers, and the New England Patriots trounced the Baltimore Colts. But the latter game sparked a controversy (dubbed “DeflateGate” on Twitter) about whether the Patriots may have illegally deflated the football slightly to make it easier [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

This week on Virtually Speaking Science, I chatted with physicist Ainissa Ramirez, co-author of Newton’s Football: The Science Behind America’s Game about her life as a self-described science evangelist and “Science Underground,” her new micro-podcast with journalist Bill Retherford. Related (since we talked a bit about the rare earth metals used in so many consumer [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

As you read this, we are making our way back to sunny Los Angeles after spending some time in Seattle. The Emerald City is on fire with Seahawks fever, so it seems appropriate to read that geologists Are Going to Measure Seattle Seahawk Fans’ Feetquake, via the judicious distribution of sensors around the stadium. Scientists [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

Welcome to 2015 and take a moment to bask in The Beauty of a Grain of Sand on a Cosmic Beach. You, too, can start off the new year admiring a gorgeous photo of a barred spiral galaxy, along with thoughts from the Bad Astronomer on how big our human minds can be — even [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

Welcome to the final links roundup of 2014. It’s a little light this week, because, well, folks are busy with family and holidays and whatnot. Nonetheless, a few hardy souls still managed to feed the Internet some sweet, sweet content. December 21 was the winter solstice. Vox had a post declaring that December 21, 2014 [...]

Jennifer Ouellette is a science writer who loves to indulge her inner geek by finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large. Jennifer can be found on Twitter as @JenLucPiquant.

I’ve always been an Edgar Allan Poe fan, so much so that I even watched the horrifying—not in a good way–2012 film The Raven. But when I spotted an essay on Poe by novelist Marilynne Robinson in the February 5 New York Review of Books, I hesitated to read it, thinking, What more can I [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

What separates good from bad troublemakers? Productive provocateurs from mere contrarians, bullshit artists, attention-seekers? This is the personalized equivalent of philosophy’s demarcation problem, which involves telling genuine from pseudo-science. Lee Smolin, a 59-year-old physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Canada, has always struck me as a good–even necessary–troublemaker. I first interviewed him in the early [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

I love apostates, believers in or, better yet, conceivers of a theory who turn against it. They restore my faith in science, because they show that scientists can overcome attachment to their own brainchildren, a feat that is essential for progress and cannot be taken for granted. Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science and [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

I met Stephen Hawking in the summer of 1990, when I spent five days in northern Sweden at a conference attended by 30 or so leading cosmologists. He was already almost totally paralyzed; he could move only one finger, with which he controlled a computer and speech synthesizer on his motorized wheelchair. One day, when [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

In 2007 Garrett Lisi was a 39-year-old physicist, unaffiliated with any institution, toiling in obscurity on what he called “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” which could account for all of nature’s forces. Over the next year he became a celebrity, after The New Yorker, Outside, Discover and other publications described him as a rootless [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

At a 1990 conference on cosmology, I asked attendees, who included folks like Stephen Hawking, Michael Turner, James Peebles, Alan Guth and Andrei Linde, to nominate the smartest living physicist. Edward Witten got the most votes (with Steven Weinberg the runner-up). Some considered Witten to be in the same league as Einstein and Newton. Witten [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

As readers of this blog know, late last spring I spoke at a cool conference in England called How the Light Gets In, where I hung out with all kinds of professional reality-ponderers. I’ve already posted Q&As with two fellow speakers I shared housing with: biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who urges scientists to take telepathy more [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

Two recent science stories, one in anthropology and the other in physics, have me wondering which field is "hard" and which "soft." The first story involves the decision of the American Anthropological Association to delete the word "science" from its mission statement. That step provoked squawks from anthropologists who’ve struggled to counter the image of [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

I’ve always thought of Stephen Hawking—whose new book The Grand Design (Bantam 2010), co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, has become an instant bestseller—less as a scientist than as a cosmic, comic performance artist, who loves goofing on his fellow physicists and the rest of us. This penchant was already apparent in 1980, when the University of [...]

Every week, hockey-playing science writer John Horgan takes a puckish, provocative look at breaking science. A teacher at Stevens Institute of Technology, Horgan is the author of four books, including The End of Science (Addison Wesley, 1996) and The End of War (McSweeney's, 2012). John can be found on Twitter as @Horganism.

The image you see here is a computer-generated model of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which we call Sagittarius A*. More precisely, it is a model of the “shadow” that Sagittarius A*, with its mass of four million suns, should cast. The glowing blob in the lower right corner is [...]

Editor’s Note: Welcome to ANITA, the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna! From October to December, Katie Mulrey is traveling with the ANITA collaboration to Antarctica to build and launch ANITA III, a scientific balloon that uses the entire continent of Antarctica for neutrino and cosmic ray detection. This is the sixth installment in a series, “Neutrinos on Ice,” documenting that effort. [...]

Katie Mulrey received a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Mary Washington in 2008. She is now in the final phase of her Ph.D. work in High Energy Particle Astrophysics at the University of Delaware. Katie is a part of the ANITA collaboration and is heading to Antarctica to participate in the 2014 ANITA balloon campaign, which will probe the highest energy processes in the universe.

What is food? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry says “Something that nourishes, sustains, or supplies.” How beautiful. That statement captures much of the emotion and feeling surrounding food, yet it’s only part of the full definition. So where does food begin? As with most big questions, it depends who you ask. Let’s start down the reductive [...]

Comfortably sitting in the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in Japantown in San Francisco, I was watching The Theory of Everything with an audience of hundreds. Like them, I was eager to watch the life of Hawking; like them I was moved by his extraordinary story; like them I was restraining myself from crying, especially when the [...]

In the last few years, stories have abounded in the press of the successes of the Large Hadron Collider, most notably the discovery of the Higgs boson. This has led some to speculate that European research is ascendant while U.S. research is falling behind. While there is no argument that U.S. particle physics budgets have [...]

Dr. Don Lincoln is a physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and an adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame. He studies data taken at the Large Hadron Collider to see if he can find evidence of particles smaller than the quarks and leptons that are currently thought to be the smallest building blocks of the universe. Lincoln is also a passionate popularizer of science, using videos, social media and books to bring the research world to the public. His most recent book, The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and other Stuff That Will Blow Your Mind, tells the exciting story of the startup of the LHC and its first discoveries.

Editors note: Craig Fay will be appearing live at the Laughing Devil Comedy Festival in New York City May 14-18. Here’s a theory for you: ignorance is bliss. If that’s true then being scientifically literate has got to be one of the most miserable and frustrating things possible. And when you think about it that [...]

Craig Fay is a Toronto based stand-up comedian whose unique ability to make science funny has seen him perform at the world famous Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. Check out his website CraigFay.com. Craig can be found on Twitter as @CraigFayComedy.

When I first became fascinated with mathematics’ tightly knit abstract structures, its prominence in physics and engineering reassured me. Mathematics’ indisputable value in science made it clear that my preoccupation with its intangible expressions was not pathological. The captivating creative activity of doing mathematics has real consequences. During my graduate school years, I began to [...]

Joselle DiNunzio Kehoe is a writer and Lecturer of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Dallas. She earned a Master of Science degree in mathematics from NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and has been teaching mathematics at the university level for more than 25 years. She has been published in the journal Isotope at Utah State University, +plus magazine and, for the past few years has been most involved in a book project that considers a biological view of mathematics. It is this pursuit that also guides the choice of subjects found in her blogs at Mathematics Rising.

Today marks the 5th Ada Lovelace Day, an annual celebration of women who have made important contributions to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The event is named for Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, who is often credited as the first computer programmer. Since its inception in 2009, Ada Lovelace Day [...]

Maia Weinstock is an editor and writer specializing in science and children's media. She is the Deputy Editor at MIT News, the news office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has previously worked at BrainPOP, Discover, SPACE.com, Aviation Week & Space Technology, and Science World. Maia is a strong advocate for girls and women, particularly in the areas of science, technology, politics, and athletics. She is an active member of Wikimedia New England and has led various efforts to increase the participation and visibility of women on Wikipedia. Maia also spearheads a number of media projects, including Scitweeps, a photo set depicting scientists and sci/tech popularizers in LEGO. She holds a degree in Human Biology from Brown University. Maia Weinstock can be found on Twitter as @20tauri.

What is the hottest problem in fundamental physics today? Physics aficionados most probably would answer: quantum gravity. Of all the fundamental forces of nature, only gravity still stands outside the rubric of the quantum theory. The difficulty of quantizing gravity has led to radical theories such as string theory, with its bold predictions of higher [...]

"He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast."—Leonardo da Vinci It’s often lonely, these days, as a theorist. As soon as most people hear the word theory, in fact, they start thinking about something like this: (Image credit: [...]

Quantum mechanics is one of the most successful theories in all of science; at the same time, it’s one of the most challenging to comprehend and one about which a great deal of nonsense has been written. However, a paper from Science, titled "Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer", holds [...]

About the author: Matthew Francis is a theoretical physicist (meaning he theoretically does physics), freelance science writer, and seeker of weirdness throughout the cosmos. He blogs at Galileo's Pendulum and tweets at @DrMRFrancis; his opinions are his own. Matthew can be found on Twitter as @DrMRFrancis.

The topic of "life after death" raises disreputable connotations of past-life regression and haunted houses, but there are a large number of people in the world who believe in some form of persistence of the individual soul after life ends. Clearly this is an important question, one of the most important ones we can possibly [...]

Is it possible to hide something within an invisible cloak? It has already been over four years since the first groundbreaking theoretical papers on invisible cloaking devices were published, stirring up a near frenzy in the physics and optics communities. Since then, new results have come at a rapid and genuinely surprising pace, and news [...]

In a nice piece on his Scientific American blog ‘Cross-Check‘, John Horgan recently gave me some much appreciated praise, whilst provoking discussion on a contentious subject – whether or not big science as we’ve known it ‘may be coming to an end’ (John’s words). Wrapped into this assertion is the idea that fundamental physics and [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

In recent days I’ve had some interesting conversations. There’s a giddiness going around, related to an outpouring of science love – the kind you get from President Obama introducing TV science shows, the kind that has wonderful visuals, but is, well, a wee bit simplistic (a sin that none of us could ever, ever be [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

“Science is all metaphor” Timothy Leary We live in an elegant universe. The cosmos is like a string symphony. Genes are selfish. There is an endless battle between thermodynamics and gravity. Do you love these statements, or hate them? The reading world gets pretty divided over whether or not it’s okay to apply metaphors and [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

Grasping for an understanding of the true scale of the cosmos is a vital part of how we try to conceptualize reality and our place among it all. But it’s tremendously difficult, whether we’re seeking that ‘oh wow’ moment, or trying to gain intuition [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

You may notice that today is the one year anniversary of the Scientific American blog network. You may also notice that across the blogs this morning is a shared theme; time for the readers to speak up. Inspired by the blogger Ed Yong, the Sci Am blogs are asking for your thoughts. Consider this an [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

Every so often in the summer months I allow myself a bit of leeway with posts, because as fun as it is to write about real science, it’s also a lot of fun to write pure speculation. I particularly like speculation that takes extraordinary possibilities about our place in the universe, and cuts them down [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

This weekend Stephen Hawking turns 70, an extraordinary physical accomplishment to add to an extraordinary list of physics accomplishments. Seeing this news reminded me of the the first time that I crossed paths with Hawking. I’d love to be able to say that it was in intellectual debate, an exchange of brilliant ideas, but in [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

For a ghostly type of particle, oblivious to even the massive bulk of a star or planet, neutrinos sure can generate a fuss. In the 1960s they created a stir by seemingly appearing from nuclear processes in our Sun’s core at a third of the anticipated rate – the so-called solar neutrino “problem“. In the [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

The past 24 hours have suddenly been awash in neutrinos, in addition to the 65 billion passing through every square centimeter of your skin every second from the Sun’s core. Although hardly the stuff of planetary science or astrobiology I have found myself facing questions from a few people who wonder if faster-than-light particles could [...]

Caleb Scharf is the director of Columbia University's multidisciplinary
Astrobiology Center. He has worked in the fields of observational
cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His books include Gravity's Engines (2012) and The Copernicus Complex (2014) (both from Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Caleb A. can be found on Twitter as @caleb_scharf.

Last night at the 87th Academy Awards, Eddie Redmayne won the Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Back in October, I was invited to attend the New York premiere of the film, which follows Hawking’s relationship with his first wife, Jane Wilde, [...]

World events left many marks and losses in 2014, but Scientific American readers kept calm and carried on for the most part, as your top picks among the stories we published this year reveal. We added in behind-the-scenes information for some of your favorites, listed below: 1. Time Travel Simulation Resolves “Grandfather Paradox”—Our online managing [...]

Wallets, wreckage and digital coin. Before the new year appears, let’s look at some of the most important technology stories Scientific American covered over the past 12 months. North Korean “cyberwar” rhetoric escalates President Barack Obama says the digital attacks in November on Sony Entertainment—allegedly by North Korea or some agent acting on its behalf—did [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

From humanity’s first, flawed foray to the surface of a comet to the celebrated discovery of (and less celebrated skepticism about) primordial gravitational waves, 2014 has brought some historic successes and failures in space science and physics. Here are my selections for the top ten stories from this year, with a look forward at what [...]

Movie audiences who went to theaters this fall to see The Theory of Everything got a glimpse of the challenges physicist Stephen Hawking has overcome to deliver his groundbreaking insights into the nature of black holes, space and time. Tuesday the world gets a peek at how new technology will let the scientist and author [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

Josh is a senior editor at Scientific American, covering biology, chemistry, and earth science. On Twitter, he is @jfischman, and you can email him story ideas at jfischman@sciam.com Josh can be found on Twitter as @jfischman.

Christopher Nolan’s new film, Interstellar, is a near-future tale of astronauts departing a dying Earth to travel to Saturn, then through a wormhole to another galaxy, all in search of somewhere else humanity could call home. It’s a gorgeous, ambitious work, with outstanding performances from a star-studded cast augmented by high-fidelity visual effects and a [...]

Even as 3-D printing’s impact on science, healthcare and consumer electronics grows, these devices aren’t likely to find their way into your home anytime soon. In fact, the closest most people will get to a 3-D printer in the near future will be ordering custom-made products from retailers that build objects the way Kinko’s and [...]

Larry Greenemeier is the associate editor of technology for Scientific American, covering a variety of tech-related topics, including biotech, computers, military tech, nanotech and robots. Larry can be found on Twitter as @lggreenemeier.

NEW YORK—When it came to relationships, Albert Einstein was no Einstein. In fact, the famous genius’s romantic entanglements could rival the dysfunction of a typical Jerry Springer guest. That’s one takeaway of the performance piece “Dear Albert,” based on Einstein’s letters, which kicked off the World Science Festival on May 28. The staged reading, written [...]

As we steel ourselves against the cold and curse the polar vortex for bringing these bitter winds upon us, it’s helpful to remember that winter can also be a magical time of fluttering snowflakes and beautiful evening skies. This Minute Physics video explains how the earth’s tilted axis makes winter the best season for viewing [...]

Telephones lie about sounds because odd numbers aren’t even. Once again with those integers and sound perception! Telephones can only pick up frequencies above 300 or 400 Hertz (cycles per second, also called Hz), but most adults’ speaking voices are lower than 300 Hz (approximately the D above middle C). And yet every day, people [...]

Today is the 189th anniversary of the birth of William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin. I don’t usually make a big deal about 189th birthdays, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Lord Kelvin recently. Yesterday I came across this quote of his on Pat Ballew’s blog, which reminded me that it’s his birthday: [...]

Last year, in the inaugural Flame Challenge, Alan Alda and the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University challenged scientists to explain what a flame is to an 11-year-old. This year, the subject was time. In particular, we were instructed to “Answer the question — ‘What is time?’ — in a way an 11-year-old [...]

The elusive Hugs Bison has been found. Brilliant visual wordplay by the always delightful Niroot Puttapipat. We featured some of his drawings on Symbiartic back in August, and make sure you’re following his new Instagram account @himmapaan. Links: Himmapaan – blog Niroot Puttapipat Illustration – Facebook page @Niroot on Twitter @Himmapaan on Instagram Prints available [...]

When a revered research institution reaches out to a fine artist to create its first ever artist-in-residency program, we should all sit up and take notice. This month, Fermilab, the celebrated particle physics research laboratory, announced a year-long partnership with artist Lindsay Olson. For those of us invested in promoting collaborations between artists and scientists, [...]

Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Kalliopi can be found on Twitter as @symbiartic.

As our month of SciArt of the Day winds down, I had to share this image. For me, this is a touchstone of what makes wonderful science-art: marrying metaphors from past and present, science and myth. The idea that art and science represent two cultures, as C.P. Snow described is a curious one. Art, or [...]

Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Kalliopi can be found on Twitter as @symbiartic.

When you think of chemistry, no doubt images of scientists in white lab coats swirling beakers and test tubes come to mind. Ever wonder where those beakers and test tubes originated? If your answer is a big science catalog like Fisher Scientific or Chemglass or the like, you’re probably right… some percentage of the time. [...]

Kalliopi Monoyios is an independent science illustrator. She has illustrated several popular science books including Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and The Universe Within, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True. Find her at www.kalliopimonoyios.com.
Kalliopi can be found on Twitter as @symbiartic.

“Europe Overtakes U.S. in Physics Pursuing God Particle,” the headline blared. The Bloomberg News story declared that the home of Galileo and Newton has recaptured the lead in physics with its pursuit of the Higgs boson, a place in the scientific firmament that was once indisputably owned by the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin. The story [...]

Gary Stix, a senior editor, commissions, writes, and edits features, news articles and Web blogs for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. His area of coverage is neuroscience. He also has frequently been the issue or section editor for special issues or reports on topics ranging from nanotechnology to obesity. He has worked for more than 20 years at SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, following three years as a science journalist at IEEE Spectrum, the flagship publication for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has an undergraduate degree in journalism from New York University. With his wife, Miriam Lacob, he wrote a general primer on technology called Who Gives a Gigabyte?
Gary can be found on Twitter as @@gstix1.

Welcome to the seventeenth installment of You Should Know, where I give my own#ScholarSunday salute to Science Bloggers and the Blogs you may not yet know about. Introducing Umberto Cannella, also known as Dr. Cinnamon! Dr. Cinnamon, the blog, is based on Dr. Cannella’s personal exploration of the physical sciences. Through his posts he [...]

DNLee is a biologist and she studies animal behavior, mammalogy, and ecology . She uses social media, informal experiential science experiences, and draws from hip hop culture to share science with general audiences, particularly under-served groups. can be found on Twitter as @DNLee5.

Women physicists are often isolated at work. Just consider the numbers: 86 percent of American faculty physicists are male; 89 percent of PhD physicists working in the science and engineering industry are male; and it was just in 2012 that the number of physics PhDs earned by women reached even 20 percent. To increase the [...]

Anne J Cox, PhD, is a Professor of Physics at Eckerd College in St Petersburg, FL. She was part of the Leadership Team of the US Delegation to the 5th International Conference on Women in Physics, August 2014.

Cindy Blaha, PhD, is Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Marjorie Crabb Garbish Professor of Liberal Arts at Carleton College in Northfield Minnesota. She runs an active astrophysics research program with undergraduates and works locally to increase diversity in STEM as co-Director of the Clare Booth Luce Scholars program (women in STEM) and coordinator of FOCUS (Focusing on Cultivating Scientists) program (underrepresented students in STEM).

Linda Fritz, PhD, Professor of Physics at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA works with undergraduates on condensed matter research and serves as a mentor for Posse Foundation scholars from New York City. She has also taught in Franklin & Marshall’s College Prep program.

Barbara Whitten, PhD, Professor of Physics, Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO is the author of several publications in the field of gender and science including “(Baby) Steps toward Feminist Physics” (JWMSE, 18: 115-134, 2012) and “What Works for Women in Undergraduate Physics? What We Can Learn from Women’s Colleges” (JWMSE, 13: 37-75, 2007).

Women in physics tend to be outnumbered by men nearly all over the world. For a few days in early August, however, it didn’t feel that way when I attended the International Conference on Women in Physics in Waterloo, Canada. Hundreds of women from about 50 countries gathered there for talks, posters and brainstorming sessions [...]

Today marks the 5th Ada Lovelace Day, an annual celebration of women who have made important contributions to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The event is named for Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, who is often credited as the first computer programmer. Since its inception in 2009, Ada Lovelace Day [...]

Maia Weinstock is an editor and writer specializing in science and children's media. She is the Deputy Editor at MIT News, the news office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has previously worked at BrainPOP, Discover, SPACE.com, Aviation Week & Space Technology, and Science World. Maia is a strong advocate for girls and women, particularly in the areas of science, technology, politics, and athletics. She is an active member of Wikimedia New England and has led various efforts to increase the participation and visibility of women on Wikipedia. Maia also spearheads a number of media projects, including Scitweeps, a photo set depicting scientists and sci/tech popularizers in LEGO. She holds a degree in Human Biology from Brown University. Maia Weinstock can be found on Twitter as @20tauri.